Well, it’s been a while since I did any late night astro photos. I still haven’t gotten back into using any dedicated astro gear – just my camera, standard lenses, and standard (non-tracking) camera tripod. The following moon shot was taken with a 100-300mm lens at 300mm (single shot) and the Cygnus wide field was taken with a 24-70mm lens at around 50mm f2.8 (63 x 4seconds at ISO 3200)

I imaged the North American Nebula last night – again without the aid of any tracking or dedicated astro-gear. It’s a tough one and extremely faint – I wasn’t able to get much detail or correct colour balancing by stacking 1.6sec exposures but it is visible:

The following is an untracked image created from stacking 99 x 1.6 sec exposures of Andromeda:

Again just a camera and camera tripod – NO telescope and NO tracking tripod.

The following image is a stacking and post processing from 27 x 8sec exposures at ISO3200 taken with my 30mm lens.

The following image was taken using my 150mm APO – also taken without the aid of a tracking mount. This image is a stacking and post processing from 67 x 1.6sec exposures at ISO3200.

For the record, the previous image required:

less than 1 minute to set up
no polar alignment
less than 4 minutes to take ALL of the frames

and no more gear than my camera, a 150mm camera lens, and a standard camera tripod

Just think what we will be able to do in a few more years – ISO 102400 here I come!

A close up cropping from that same image:

Some images from the HAA Public Night in Brantford

I stepped out early to take images of the setting moon with my new EOS 50D:

and as it passed behind a communications tower:

Here’s a shot of the Milkyway I took three nights ago just before the bright moon rose. It is a single 1 minute exposure at ISO 1600 – standard camera tripod – no tracking – using a 4.5mm fisheye lens.

And another image taken the next day – processed slightly differently (this was from 9 – 30 seconnd exposures).

I lucked out with these shots – no visible objects tracking through. However, on another series of 30 second exposures I had what would initially appear to be a meteor – except from the length of the 3 exposures it was caught on – it looks to have lasted around 1 minute. So I am guessing it may have been a satellite that rotated to suddenly become bright. Notice the “curved path” caused by the edge of the fisheye. I don’t know – if anyone has a better theory let me know.

I tried something different last night – I imaged widefield – hand held. That’s right, hand held – no tripod. It’s not a hi-def closeup of any celestial target – but it does show just how far technology has come. The cameras of today are so light sensitive that wide field astro-photography can be done not only without a tracking tripod – but without any tripod at all. The following image was taken with a Canon 40D at 30mm – ISO3200:

And for those that like this – Canon just announced the release of their EOS 50D which has over twice the light sensitivity (and 50% more pixels) than the EOS 40D.

I had a chance to catch the moon rise last night. I had hoped it was going to rise above the Skyway but unfortunately it rose just to the left from my vantage point.

Last night I was at a dark sky site (Emmitt Lake – just south east of Tobermory) – absolutely no light pollution – so I set up and started taking 10 to 15 second exposures of the night sky. About 120 images in all. No skyglow. Nice high contrast images. When I started to process the images I discovered pollution of a different nature spread through all but about 10 of my shots… almost every shot had between 1 to 4 satellites or planes tracking through. All of the following images were taken using a Canon EOS40D, a 30mm f/1.4 Sigma Lens, and a standard camera tripod – no tracking. None of the following images were stacked (wouldn’t do any good since the main targets are moving) – single shots of 10 to 15 seconds at ISO 1600.

A meteor (green trail) and a satellite caught on this shot:

A meteor caught just as it started to dissintegrate:

There are 6 satellites tracking through this image – actually, I think the two faint ones are micro-meteors as they are longer (thus travelling faster) and much fainter – can you spot them all?

I have zoomed in a bit and highlighted 4 of the satellites from the previous image (there is actually a faint fifth satellite or meteor that I didn’t highlight and the sixth satellite/meteor was cropped out of this shot):

And another with 2 satellites and 2 planes tracking through:

Most of the other shots had only 1 or 2 objects passing through – by stacking multiple frames these objects can be digitally removed – as in the following image created from 26 ten seconds exposures:

So I tried my new lens out last night with some success (despite a bit of haze/cloud). The following was shot without tracking (standard camera mount) – using a 30mm fast (f/1.4) lens on a Canon EOS40D. It is a stacking of light, dark, and flat frames. Exposure was 15 seconds at ISO 1600 – in all there were 20 light frames (normal shots) used. Star trailing was just barely becoming evident – I will try using 10 second exposures next time. This is just another example of how astro-photography does not require a lot of expensive gear (or a lot of setup and alignment time).

We had another large gathering at Binbrook last night. The viewing conditions weren’t that great (what with the haze and near full moon) but the company and warm weather more than made up for it.

We started with another colourful sunset.

(calender cover shot?)

As the sun was setting – we were joined by a kayaker (Martin).

Contrails in front the moon made for interesting views.

When not block by contrails – the moon was in full glory.

The following is the same shot after stacking and drizzle resampling 80 images using Registax

The gathering.

All preceding images were taken with a Canon EOS 40D using a Sigma 50-500mm APO.